Voices: Caught up in the Charlotte maelstrom

CHARLOTTE — Somewhere in that mass of bodies, sandwiched between Charlotte-Mecklenburg police suited in riot gear and protesters outraged over the shooting of a black man, is a photographer.

Many years ago, I took a deserved tongue-lashing from a colleague when he overheard me say, “My photographer will be there at …” and so I stopped referring to the co-workers who lift lenses to their eyes as mine. 

But she’s between all those writhing bodies, Lauren Petracca, and that possessive rises in my head, professional courtesy be damned, as I watch the backs of protesters pressing forward into a wall of officers. 

Petracca had texted earlier, her wordplay unintended, said she was in the epicenter, meaning the Epicentre, Charlotte’s downtown shopping and dining hot spot.

My photographer. In the epicenter.

I press forward, too, toward the front of the Omni Hotel, wanting to see Petracca and to capture whatever story lies amid the shouts and confusion.

If someone yelled, “Run!” I don’t remember it. Those of us in the back turned heel in unison, like a flock of starlings flying in military precision, and we ran.

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We dodged behind cars and concrete walls and a bus stop a half-block up. No one could tell me why we ran, and I hold my breath, watching the tight crowd of people who did not bolt though a light haze of smoke.

Gently, I test the air, wondering if we’ve been tear gassed. A lifetime ago, I was in the Army, and as privates, we counted off jumping jacks in an outbuilding clouded with the chemical and came out with tears and snot dripping down our uniforms. 

Dots of sweat pepper my nose, but nothing weeps from my nostrils, and like so many who retreated, I advance again, more cautious, recording video on Facebook.

The connection is weak, and someone says the police are using jammers to block video. I don’t know about that. I only know I had no problems at other times on this showcase stretch of Trade Street, with its five-star hotels and oyster bar and corporate bank offices that run on tourist dollars and white-collar worker labor.

Everyone in Keith Lamont Scott's Charlotte neighborhood knew him

A sharp pop rings out. Or maybe two or maybe 10. We are fleeing again, and the only sound that is important is the voice in my head, drowning out all others. “Run!” it shouts, and I shout, “Run!” and everyone shouts, “Run!” and I let go of four-letter curses that would buy me a whack from my mother, rest her soul.

A woman comes out crying and screaming that a man was shot dead by police. Someone says there is blood and brains on the sidewalk, and someone says it was a rubber bullet, and I say, “Where’s Lauren?”

I don’t remember finding her, this photographer of mine, with two Nikons swinging from her sides, but here she is, and pleasantries can wait. Piercing cracks of flash-bangs cut the air clouded by more smoke, and now I’ve got an editor in my ear, demanding we get back.

My words come out machine-gun fast, and no reasonable person sitting in an office can understand this jumble, I know, but I don’t know how to slow down.  A canister lands at our feet and Petracca yells, “Run!” and I yell, “Run!”

A young guy stops Petracca, tells her he threw it, a smoke bomb that failed to detonate. He wasn’t aiming at us, he says. He’s not from Charlotte, he says. He just wanted a piece of mayhem.

I spit some choice words at him. I don’t think my mother would mind.

We drop into a parking bay, and Petracca looks at her camera, seeing an image of a man, looking injured, collapsing into the arms of others. Another shows blood spilled on brick pavers. She’s not sure what happened.

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Later, another news photographer tells her he saw a man with a revolver, not police, fire the fatal shot.

Later, Petracca’s mom calls her and tells her to get out of Charlotte, because that’s what moms do. Her daughter declines, offers some glossed-over version of the truth, because that’s what daughters do.

Petracca’s mom, I’d guess, is learning just how deeply her daughter was caught up in that roiling confusion here. My apologies to both of you. But that’s what reporters do.

We stayed on Trade Street, watching lines of iron-faced riot police push back against an angry crowd and tried to sort out this fog of war. 

Demonstrations the next night, Thursday, drew hundreds of protesters who took to Uptown streets in an hours-long march, their character peaceful, but determined in wanting answers in the Tuesday shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by a police officer.

Nothing about the night felt like the battlefield that marked Wednesday. I did not curse. Petracca did not have to lie to her mom.

But in Charlotte, a fog remains, and this epicenter of banking is now an epicenter of a different kind.

Maxwell is the investigative reporter at the Asheville Citizen-Times.